


your lies fall like bullets (your truth starts to rust)

by Timballisto



Series: clarke and lexa vs the world [20]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Clarke's kind of fucked up, F/F, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-2x16, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 01:38:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3551225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timballisto/pseuds/Timballisto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>There would always be metal and blood between them.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Or, the one where Lexa has a tongue piercing and I ruin it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your lies fall like bullets (your truth starts to rust)

She shouldn't be doing this.

Lexa's lips are parted, pliant and warm beneath her own and Clarke _should not be doing this._

The ashes of Finn's pyre and the smoking wreckage of Ton DC are barely cool and those deaths weigh on her mind heavier than the responsibility of her Hundred, her Forty-Seven, the entire fucking future of the Ark-

But here she is, pressing Lexa back against a table with insistent hands and a feverish mouth. Maybe it is the commander’s impenetrable facade, only slightly cracked but never shattered, opaque and shuttered. Maybe it is Lexa's infuriating stoicism in the face of Clarke's naked emotion. Maybe Clarke is startlingly fond of Lexa, despite all the blood between them, and she can't handle that right now (not yet) and she just wants to fuck her feelings away.

She deeps the kiss, roughens it until she has to drag her mouth away for lack of air. Lexa looks dazed, her warpaint mussed and her lips bruised red; she's breathing hard and holding onto the solid wood of the table as if it would keep her grounded.

"I know you feel, just like I do." Clarke whispered, ducking her head to press her lips below Lexa's ear, against the flexing of her pulse. "As much as you pretend not to." Her hands drifted to Lexa's heavy belt, fumbling with the buckle.

Lexa's hands closed around Clarke's wrists. "You are distraught." she managed, her throat bobbing as she swallowed. "You are not yourself-"

"I haven't felt like myself since I landed on Earth." Clarke said, bitterly, and it’s that discordance that gives Lexa the strength to gently push Clarke away.

“Clarke.” she said, so gently that Clarke shivered despite herself. “You said you were not ready."

Clarke took a few harsh, deep breaths trying to center herself.

She nodded, averting her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Lexa said, and though her face reverted to her usually stoic mask, Clarke imagines she can see the cracks of bemusement there. "We'll have time enough, later."

Later, when Clarke is standing in the ruins of everything, _alone_ , the bodies of children at her feet and blood on her hands—she wondered if she saw anything at all.

* * *

It took a week for Clarke to bury the dead at Mount Weather. After she was done, she sat in the shade of one of the trees and looked out over the field of the dead. There was blood beneath her fingernails, and blood slicked up and down the haft of the shovel from the burst blisters on her hands. 

She sat with her pistol in her mouth for three hours. Her hands ached, and it was hard to hold the gun steady. The trigger is slippery from the blood on her hands, and she imagines it wouldn't take much to just accidentally- 

When she gets up and leaves a day later, she doesn’t know if it’s weakness or strength that keeps her from pulling the trigger.

It’s weakness that brings her to Polis. She has some halfcocked ideas of killing Lexa, and then letting the commander's bodyguards do the rest. Or maybe she'd attack Lexa in public, and let tradition do the rest. Instead, she finds herself hailed at the gates and personally escorted to the commander's quarters. She notes, with savage pleasure, the Indra won't meet her eyes. 

She wishes Lexa wouldn't meet her eyes either. Instead, she looks up, her eyes grey and hopeful. "Clarke."

"Lexa." Her voice is brittle. Harsh. It feels good to see Lexa flinch at it.

"I did not expect you." Lexa said, after a few stretched seconds of silence. She seemed nervous, if such a term could be applied to the grounder commander.

"Because the last time you saw me, you were leaving me and my people for dead." Clarke said flatly.

Lexa nodded, stiffly. "Yes."

And Clarke wishes she had it in her for one more death, one more killing; one more bullet right between Lexa's eyes. But she is so, _so_ tired of death. And she can read that same exhaustion in the marks on Lexa's face, and it's almost too much for Clarke to bear for her to have anything in common with Lexa.

"The alliance will hold." Clarke said. It's not a request. "You'll protect them. Or you'll answer to _me_."

And then she's gone as swiftly as she'd arrived.

* * *

The first time, Clarke finds Lexa after a feast day. There is honeyed mead on her lips, and a looseness in her limbs and she doesn't shy from pressing her lips against Lexa's ear and drawing her away from the fire. Clarke is drunk, and sad, and Lexa can't say no. Clarke tastes like ash in Lexa’s mouth, betrayal on her lips, blood in her teeth, and honey—and Lexa savors it. She never pinned herself for self-flagellation, but Lexa had never imagined sweeter punishment than this.

And it would end, soon enough, when Clarke presses against her in the privacy of her quarters and licks into her mouths and finds—

Clarke pulls away, her eyebrows knit in confusion, a question she's almost too proud to ask on her lips.

A heavy ball of iron that sits on Lexa’s tongue, pinned there with a sharp needle and sharper guilt, pulls the words from her. “It’s a punishment.” Lexa murmured, the metal clicking against her teeth. “For oathbreakers.”

She sees the understanding dawn in Clarke's eyes, and the way they dim at the reminder and steels herself for the brunt of Clarke's rage. Clarke takes her chin in hand and kisses her instead. When Clarke leaves her, spent and gasping, Lexa does not expect to see her return. But she comes back the next night. And the next. 

The metal in Lexa’s mouth tastes tantalizingly close to the barrel of her gun. That’s what Clarke tells herself, every time she finds herself seeking Lexa out, pushing her into the shadows to bruise her mouth.

Lexa’s betrayal hums against her skin, dragging along the column of Clarke’s neck, it reminds her when she forgets, glinting in the firelight and cool against her skin.

“You aren’t forgiven.” She pants at night, her eyes closed so she doesn’t have to see Lexa between her legs. She doesn’t know why she bothers; she can feel that little ball of iron between them no matter how hard she tries to ignore it. When Lexa slips to her knees, pushing Clarke back and parting her knees to brush between them, it's easy to pretend everything is alright. But then Lexa puts her mouth against her clit, and her piercing catches against her skin- it makes Clarke jerk and gasp. She twines her hands into Lexa's hair (too gently, too carefully) and comes against Lexa's mouth, against the evidence of Lexa's sin. "You aren't forgiven." 

Lexa never responds. She doesn’t need to—she never expected forgiveness in the first place.

But Clarke repeats it every night to remind herself. Because she can feel her pain and her hurt slipping away with every wary smile Lexa sends her way, every brief brush of hands.

So she’s glad that Lexa tastes like metal, like blood, and betrayal.

Otherwise, forgiveness would come far too easily.


End file.
